(a) Field of the Invention
A method for forming a metal oxide pattern and a method of manufacturing a thin film transistor using the same are disclosed.
(b) Description of the Related Art
A transistor is widely used as a switching device or a driving device for an electronic device. In particular, a metal oxide-based thin film transistor is being paid much attention because of its mobility, stability, and transparency. However, the metal oxide-based thin film transistor is expected to be produced without vacuum equipment at room temperature with a low cost in order to be more variously applied in a related field.
Accordingly, there is wide research in the electronic printing field related to the metal oxide-based thin film transistor. In the electronic printing field, an electronic device is fabricated in a printing method by using various inks such as a metal ink for an electrode, a conductive wire, or the like, a semiconductor ink for a semiconductor layer, a dielectric material ink for a dielectric layer, and a protective ink for protecting a device or a particular layer.
Among these inks, a semiconductor ink is conventionally used to fabricate an active layer for a thin film transistor whose crystal structure should be re-arranged by a sintering method. However, this sintering method is very limiting when applied to a soft electron device.
In addition, a metal oxide ink is printed and sintered to fabricate the semiconductor layer and/or dielectric layer. Herein, the metal oxide ink needs to be sintered at a high enough temperature to flow, which may damage a substrate and thus have a bad influence on the structure and operation characteristics of a device.
In order to ameliorate the drawback of the conventional sintering method, a laser sintering method has been introduced to treat only a layer on a substrate without damaging the substrate by controlling power, wavelength, or the like of a laser.
However, the laser sintering method still has some drawbacks of being applied to a very limited area, requiring non-economical laser equipment, and being inefficiently controlled. Accordingly, development of a new sintering method is increasingly demanded.